I'd translate this, but I don't really think it's necessary... the French certainly have a - well, frisson - that we can't manage over here. I mean, I'm sure that there are dictionaries and glossaries of sexuality in English, but are they half as exciting-looking as Le Dictionnaire de Sexologie? As an area of study in the English-speaking world, sexuality is totally desexified (if that's not a word, I'd like to consider myself its inventor); I'll bet the French can't desexify their hernia operations.

My French is rustier than it should be, considering that I was, well, "immersed" in it from 1983 to 1998, but listen to this: "Jean Cocteau lui-meme, presentant a la presse un spectacle compose de trois de ses pieces en un acte, declarait, peu de temps avant sa mort, que ce spectacle representait pour lui un "veritable strip-tease de l'ame".

Clunkily: "Jean Cocteau himself, presenting three of his pieces to the press, declared shortly before his death that the spectacle was for him a virtual strip-tease of the soul."

When I was in Paris, I didn't have a great time. I was sick, and the people weren't nice, and I found London and Amsterdam to be full of far more amiable people. But I have to step back occasionally and admire the lilting sensuality of the French language - in evidence anytime except those when someone spits to you that you really did order a box of tampons, not a box of tissue.

I've been looking at this book for about an hour now, and quietly revising my travel plans to spend a bit more time in France. We'll try to fix it so that I don't actually have to communicate with anyone: I just want to listen.